sound and fury
by xIrelandx
Summary: Apollo has spent his life classified as an ordinary Human, less than special in every way. Apollo's life has been a lie. Magical Realism AU. Phoenix x Apollo


Most people who met him assumed Apollo was a Demon. It mostly had to do with the way he fixed his hair. He didn't care what others thought; hair that sticks up in the front is not a mark of a Demon, and anyone who thought it was, was an idiot. There were also those who had heard Apollo's loud voice, and became frightened of it. Apollo didn't speak very often, as this reaction was frequent and got him into trouble. Officially, however, Apollo wasn't classed as anything. He was just a Human, simple and ordinary.

His Human standing used to bother him when he was younger, because it made finding adoptive and even foster parents all the more difficult. Those in the market to adopt or foster always wanted children who were special - Reapers, Muses, even Demons would do. Angels didn't exist anymore, or they'd be at the top of the list. There were other classifications, of course. Sirens were known to cause trouble, the Fey all lived out in the woods, and Minor Deities tended to work in government or in other positions of authority. But still, these sub-classifications weren't part of the elite four groupings - Angels, Demons, Reapers, Muses - so they didn't matter as much.

_And I don't even have any of those to work with with_, Apollo thought to himself. He'd been shipped off to a boarding school after the orphanage decided he couldn't possibly be a late bloomer and was therefore a full Human all the way. He was now waiting to talk to the Dean, a Minor Deity, about his placement in society. It was the same with all other Humans, especially those without parents.

"Justice, Apollo." The Dean's voice was gravelly, tired, but severe. Apollo could feel his stomach churning. He didn't know why he was so nervous. Maybe it was because he'd never been in the Dean's office before. He tried to stay out of trouble, always afraid of getting caught out in the few times he and Clay misbehaved. The boarding school, with its strict rules and harsh punishments, was not a good place to stick out. The Code of Conduct itself stressed the importance of blending in, and even if it hadn't, Apollo's fellow students did not look kindly upon difference.

"Yes, sir?" The Dean's office was full in velvet, a dark burgundy. The wood of the man's desk and bookshelves clashed with the carpet and upholstery, a light brown in a cherry wash. The room smelt of cough medicine and was humid with the windows shut. The Dean had once been a judge, a job that ran in his family. Apollo always tried to watch what he said when the Dean was present, as Apollo had always wanted to become an attorney. If the Dean didn't give him approval on the subject... Apollo didn't like to think what might happen to him.

"You helped me on the case of Wright vs Gavin," the Dean removed his glasses. The look he leveled Apollo with was unsettling. The man's eyes were dead, but Apollo still felt he was being scrutinized. Apollo worried that perhaps his outbursts in court had been inappropriate, and inexcusable by way of youthful excitement. There was a short pause here as the Dean deliberated on his sentence, silence stilling the thick air. Finally, the Dean decided. "You will be a lawyer."

Apollo breathed a sigh of relief, and was readying himself to give a thank you when the Dean issued an addition. "You will go and work for Phoenix Wright."

The air seemed to drop, a chill whispering from a puttering fan in the hallway. It had gone unnoticed in the stiff atmosphere before, the intensity choking out anything but the heat's oppression. Now that Apollo was distracted, his attention was easily stolen the words he wanted to use blurred from focus. "M-Mr. Wright?" he stuttered.

"Yes," the Dean hummed. "You remember him from the trial, don't you?"

He did. A mess of black hair under a blue hat, cocky smile on an unshaven face. Apollo hated something about him - the way he tried to hand Apollo forged evidence was perhaps part of it, but more likely it was the way that the man couldn't stop staring at Apollo. And Apollo couldn't stop staring back. They'd held a stare for a full minute, brown eyes meeting in an unknown communication. Then Phoenix's eyes flashed blue, and he turned away. Apollo had they urge to punch the older man and alleviate the dark heaviness in his stomach. Apollo didn't mention any of this, nodding by way of reply. "Mr. Wright has specifically requested after you. If you do not accept this offer -"

"I- I do!" Apollo had no other choice, although this was not necessarily a bad one. He was merely curious as to why Phoenix Wright would want him, specifically. Apollo was hardly the only law student at the school, nor was he even the most impressive.

The Dean had dismissed Apollo shortly after. The young man hadn't really been paying attention to the final moments of their meeting, lost in the memory of blue eyes setting fires across his body.

* * *

Apollo wasn't even sure where to begin. On the upside of not having family, it meant very few awkward goodbyes and no home sickness. The only person he was planning on missing would not be all that far away.

"You're going to Cali too? Awesome!" Clay was bouncing up and down on his bed. The fact that they were both twenty-three - very nearly twenty-four - didn't deter Clay from his youthful behaviors. The boarding school kept them until they were deemed ready, allowing them to study whatever tickled their fancy until the Dean decided what they were to do with their lives. From there on out, they were relatively on their own.

"Yep," Apollo answered shortly. He didn't have many belongings to pack, and he and Clay were scheduled to make their departures as soon as he was finished.

"I wonder how far it is," Clay mused, "From...wherever we are, to California."

And there it was, the ever-present question: where were they? They'd been taught all the states, but weren't sure which one they were living in. Their access to the internet was limited to the network set up specifically for the school It must have been a big state - Texas, maybe? - because despite it being boys-only, it was rather large.

There was one small window in Clay and Apollo's room, and they usually used it to observe the night sky. On this evening the world was clouded and uncertain, matching Apollo's mental state.

The hallway was grey and empty, the same as always, as Apollo and Clay walked along to the back exit. Apollo didn't find it surprising, but he could feel Clay vibrating with sadness. "I thought maybe..." Apollo turned to look at his friend, stopping in his tracks. Clay was avoiding meeting Apollo's eyes. It didn't matter that they were the best of friends; any sign of weakness was still a sign of weakness. Their peers could not be trusted, their guard could not be let down. Apollo reached over and rubbed the inside of Clay's wrist. The simple movement was over in a second. Even in the privacy of the empty hallway or their dorm, the two could not be as intimate with each other as their friendship had made them feel. "I just thought that maybe, because we won't be back, someone might want to come and say goodbye."

Apollo pulled himself up to his full height, head held high. "We're fine, Clay," Apollo insisted. "We'll be fine. We don't need anybody else."

Clay smiled. "You're right, Apollo. I'm fine! You're fine! We're fine!"

"You're loud!" A mousy-haired boy a few doors down poked his head out of his room. He slammed the door angrily, but Clay's smile remained. Apollo was glad he managed to make his friend feel more confident. Apollo himself had only been putting on a front.

The plane they boarded now was much smaller than the one Apollo had taken to arrive at the boarding school. There were no windows, except for in the cockpit, and they were not allowed there under any circumstances. Apollo and Clay had been afforded their own rows as there was only one other person, a young girl, on the plane with them. Clay slipped a pill from his pocket and dry-swallowed it to ease his nerves. Apollo tried not to watch the flight attendants too closely, pretending instead to be fascinated by the bangle on his wrist. It was a strange gold bracelet, plenty fascinating enough in the way it occasionally pinched his arm. He'd tried to take it off several times before, but found that he couldn't remove it. So the band remained on his left arm, a glaring reminder of the people who didn't want him.

Apollo closed his eyes as the plane rushed forward and sped from the ground. Takeoff was an odd sensation; even though he'd been on a plane only once before now, Apollo couldn't forget the feeling. His stomach dropped, the temperature changed, and he could feel himself quivering all over. He wasn't sure which he felt more like - laughing, or vomiting. One of the other boys had likened it to falling in love, but Apollo didn't trust him on that. The boy in question was far too young to have ever been in love. Besides, Apollo had felt this feeling once between the two trips: when meeting Phoenix Wright's eyes in the courtroom, before they changed to blue and the other man looked away.

That trial had been such a train wreck. The judge appeared to have known all the players - accused, accuser, prosecution. He'd even made some comment, about Mr. Wright having a "talent" for the ridiculous. Apollo remembered reading his name before in law textbooks. He was famous before, but Gavin's accusation that Wright was not at all what he seemed ruined his reputation. To Apollo's knowledge, Phoenix Wright no longer practiced law. And after that trial, neither did Mr. Gavin.

Apollo wasn't allowed to understand the full gravity of the situation, only that Phoenix Wright was accused of murder. The man had spent a lot of time staring at Apollo, making the younger uneasy. Without speaking, he'd handed Apollo what looked to be a bloodstained card. Apollo's adviser had quickly called him out on the forged evidence, but he didn't need to explain it to Apollo. "It's painted, isn't it?" his fingers were trembling in anger. Phoenix had the audacity to smirk at him. "You think it's the only way to prove your innocence, but it isn't."

There was something odd about the way Wright smiled at him. "You're cute, kid," he said, "but you're real naive." The look on his face when Apollo managed to single-handedly prove him innocent without using the forged evidence was priceless, and yet rich in and of itself. Apollo dreamt of that stare sometimes, waking up sweating and unsure of the state of his heart.

Apollo wished he had a window to look out of, or any sort of distraction to keep his mind off of the man he would soon be living with and learning from. There was a small television seat embedded into the seat in front of him. Apollo leaned in to turn it on, but was startled to find himself staring at a pair of blue eyes. He snapped his neck around, looking behind him quickly to see if Clay had managed to sneak up on him, but his friend was still asleep in the row next to him. Apollo had a feeling he knew those eyes, believed he'd watched them turn brown just before he looked away.

He didn't give himself time to hallucinate again. He leaned forward and pressed the power button, turning his focus to the first blaring radio station his fingers touched.


End file.
